Hundreds of green bottles…

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

Life is colourful at present: blue skies, green bottles, red and white wines and black teeth again.

The first week in July sees a core group of six tasters gather in Stellenbosch at Joostenberg’s conference venue on a daily basis to taste through the more than 1 000 submissions to WINE magazine’s annual Best Value Wine Guide tasting.

We did a seeding round last week and reduced the numbers somewhat – but we started Monday still facing around 600 wines over four days. All of these wines qualify on the basis of being available commercially for R60 or less.

With a few years of Best Value already under our belts, chairperson Christine Rudman and myself have been really impressed by the overall quality. We weren’t anticipating that there’d be as many as 600 wines making the cut. We expected a 50% attrition rate.

Having tasted through half of the 60-odd Sauvignons Blanc and about the same number of red blends, the standard has been surprisingly high. Although still very young and newly bottled, early indications are that 2009 is a good year for the crispy whites. Gone are the days when tasting Sauvignon Blanc at Value would leave tasters reaching for antacids and wailing about thin, dilute, acidic and watery wines. It’s obvious that winemakers have expended a bit of effort on extended skin and lees contact. Net result is wines that are richer, more creamy and with fuller mouthfeel. Roll on summer I say…